The Environment and a Globalizing Sociology

Randolph Haluza-DeLay, Debra J. Davidson

Abstract

Abstract. The challenges for sociology posed by global environmental crises are two-fold. First, the growing prevalence of environmental dilemmas in global society demand that a globalizing sociology also be an environmental sociology. This requires the discipline to refine its ability to integrate environmental influences into its conceptual frameworks on social change. Second, the effectiveness of society’s strategic responses to environmental crises depends on the degree to
which understanding the generation of environmental problems and responding to them are sociologically informed. Consequently, sociologists can make important contributions to environmental improvement, through sociological research on environmental discourses within civil society. However, this can only be done if the first challenge is addressed.

In this paper, we highlight coupled socioecological systems functioning in an embedded hierarchy of local, regional, and global scales. Strategic environmental response depends particularly on governance structures and the production and accessibility of knowledge and we focus our discussion on these two domains. Global environmental changes have introduced multiple sources of challenge for nation-states and for the ways in which democratic participation in governance becomes operative. The dramatic shifts in governance fomented by environmental concern in and of themselves require sociological attention; sociologists
also have a role in evaluating the efficacy of these organizational networks for addressing environmental crises. Second, we turn our attention to the means by which these environmental changes have challenged the production of knowledge about the environment. For example, the limits of traditional methods of scientific inquiry accompany an erosion in society’s confidence in science as a harbinger of progress, all the while simultaneously pushing science — however reluctantly for scientists themselves — into a position of political prominence. We close with suggestions for future sociological attention to governance and
knowledge, and the ways this projects sociology more effectively into the global milieu in which environmental change will be increasingly salient.